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    Latent Prints
    Latent Prints
    Latent Prints
    Ebook59 pages49 minutes

    Latent Prints

    By Lara Biyuts

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Story about an old bachelor. Set in a fictional town of the Russian Empire, the 1980s, Latent Prints is a story of one day of life of a schoolteacher of the name of Desiderius Schell. A lifelong bachelor and bookworm, Mr Schell recollects his life among his pupils and his meeting with a mysterious youth whose friendship could be dangerous for anybody.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLara Biyuts
    Release dateJun 25, 2014
    ISBN9781311420251
    Latent Prints
    Author

    Lara Biyuts

    Lara Biyuts (aka Lara Biuts) author of 14 books of fiction, writer of the RevueBlanche.blogspot, collage maker for her bookcovers, translator, who signs her translations as Larisa Biyuts. Her novella A Handful of Blossoms is 2012 Rainbow Awards Honorable Mention. Her works are accepted for anthologies: Cat’s Cradle Time Yarns (Time Yarns Anthologies), Authors off the Shelf (Lazy Beagle Entertainment), Of Words and Water 2014 (Words and Water group supporting WaterAid), Hope Springs a Turtle, The Black Rose of Winter, and Greek Fire (Lost Tower Publications). Her old tale and poems are featured on TheHolidayCafe.com (2013). Her poetry is on the monthly eJournal The Criterion (April, 2014). She is a Goodreads librarian.Her novel La Lune Blanche is the first of the series. "The novel is the world where pleasures of life and pleasures of art are just norms." (Turner Maxwell Books)“The author produces a setting which is detailed and believable, and also characters which the reader gets to know well. Also the plot moves along nicely through-out the story.” (April O., facebook.com)“Lara Biyuts’ writing is deep and multi layered.” (Maggie Mack Books, maggiemackbooks.com)“Lara Biyuts comes to us from the great tradition of Nabokov and Conrad, enriching our literature in English with the rich cosmopolitain perspecitve of the East European tradition leading back to Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Like those great masters she takes us also into the shadow world of sexuality with its hidden psychology, possession and sensual revelations.” (Robert Sheppard, Author of the novel Spiritus Mundi, linkedin.com)“The secret of Lara Biyuts is her tales. The secret of her tales is their charm. The secret of the charm is Lara Biyuts.” (Les Hudson, goodreads.com)Favorite quotes:“Follow me, reader! Who told you that there is no true, faithful, eternal love in this world! May the liar's vile tongue be cut out! Follow me, my reader, and me alone, and I will show you such a love!” (Mikhail Bulgakov)“Cowardice is the most terrible of vices.” (Mikhail Bulgakov)for emails: larisabeeATyahooDOTcom

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      Book preview

      Latent Prints - Lara Biyuts

      Latent Prints

      by

      Lara Biyuts

      SMASHWORDS EDITION

      * * * * *

      PUBLISHED BY:

      Lara Biyuts on Smashwords

      Latent Prints

      Copyright 2014 by Lara Biyuts

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      * * * * *

      Latent Prints

      Artist: "Forgive my colours too pale. One can’t get anything

      better in our town."

      Chapter 1

      Athwart the feathers of the night…

      (Oscar Wilde. Le Reveillon)

      It was after hours; all shops in New Market Street were closed, signboards moonlit, streets empty. Only the alley of oaklets was not empty, far from it, with silhouettes of walking people now grew long in the moonlight, now disappeared in the dark shadows of the trees and gabled kiosks.

      Busy by day, the seltzer and fruit drink kiosks were silent at the night hours, looking dark like exotic gabled tombs in this European small town. The townspeople in their best clothing walked in pairs or in ranks, with a vibration in ladies’ plumed hats in strict accordance with the fashion of the current late 1880s. Shrill laughter. Booming voices. Red sparks of cigarettes in the air. An old man, lonely, going through the empty streets, glanced at them from afar and went on.

      As far as the scanty lighting of the small town permitted to see, the old man was dressed seasonably but not as a dandy, with his hat shading his bearded face. Reaching a T-junction, he paused, looked back, whistled and called, Bustopher!

      A short-legged dog, pausing at a lamppost, came running to his human who should be introduced in this story too. Mr Cornelius Schell the Teacher. Seeing his dog’s response, Mr Schell turned right. Disposed for night walks in summer, the two were on the way to the old man’s humble abode at the southern end of the town, far away yet within walking distance for him at his age.

      Reaching the next turn, Mr Cornelius Schell paused at a two-storey mansion. It was the local Gentlemen’s Club. No lit windows. The old man went round the house and found himself on Old Square. Next, across the Square, towards the Cathedral, and the moonlight blanched the walls, making the Cathedral look like an airy looming or phantom. Wearing his white linen suit, walking slowly, with his shadow as a giant with a club, the old man could look like a phantom too, if not his cane’s measured knocking sound along with his giant shadow. An apocalyptic beast fallowed the creeping giant, the shadow of Bustopher the dog. After passing the Cathedral, Mr Schell passed the house of the Governor, with the pillared porch and the watch-tower of the police office seen behind, and he entered a solitary place, familiar and empty, the waste-ground where he made several steps more, but…

      Chapter 2

      "Unmoored in midnight water,

      no waves, no wind,

      the empty boat is flooded

      with moonlight."

      (Eihei Dogen. 1200-1253)

      …a nightingale began singing.

      The waste-ground was the other part of the Square, the unpaved one that served as a market place for the Autumn Fair annually, in the old man’s hometown, the town of Gruzdovo, in the south-west of the Russian Empire. On the left, the empty shopping arcade yawned dark archways. On the opposite side, a dark mass of trees came into view from the dusk with the pricking spears of the iron fence and gleaming metal medallions suggesting private parkland.

      Each of the cast-iron spiral-shaped posts of the Park fence was crowned by a cast-iron lily blossom. It was not so difficult to suggest that on festive occasions these cups were

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